Joe Chernov: The Case for Being Easy to Root For

I have a lot of them.

They all play different roles.

You know, I've had a good career, but it's been built on the back of relationships and luck.

I could name Brian Cardin, who hired me at Eloqua.

And the reason for Brian is we were both at career crossroads.

We just didn't realize it.

And we sort of needed each other.

where Brian had joined the software company from Forrester, where he was CMO of a services business.

And he finally had like a bite at the apple of being CMO of a pretty hot software company.

And I was in PR and social media was cresting.

And there was this like little germ of like content marketing starting to sprout.

And I wanted to get out of PR.

He wanted to establish himself at the front lines of like being CMO of a veritable software And he gave me a big budget and a long leash and said, figure it out.

And I helped serve his interests of helping establish Eloqua's marketing department.

And he served mine.

He gave me a path out of PR.

And I had a personal motivation to do that.

I just felt like the industry was cratering at the moment.

That would be somebody that really believed in me and the level of sort of agency he offered me.

Made me feel like I had a hand in the accomplishments because he stood out of my way and just let me figure it out.

That would be somebody that comes to mind right away.

You know, another is you talk about criminal justice in Spanish.

You know, I never took a business class.

I never took an economics class.

I thought I was going to work for the government.